Tips for Marketing Budget

[Reputer459]

Hello,

I'm planning a new hire for a mid-sized building supplies business to manage the marketing budget, the budget is relatively small £150k, I will be taking over the customer/ops arm and need to know what questions and answers should I be expecting during the pitch or interviews I will be arranging shortly? And how should I expect the individual/contractor to manage the budget? my view is this will be managed in line with % of revenue on a monthly basis? but I'm not too sure.
Thanks

 

[intheTRADE]

Where will they be advertising?

 

[Reputer459]

Hi @intheTRADE across multiple digital channels such as; SEO, Paid social advertising, Google ads, CRO.

 

[Deleted member 335660]

It depends on what you expect that budget to cover. For example, an exhibition of major campaign on a new product will mean spending up front. So your idea of a monthly target may not work.

If I was being interviewed I would want to know what sort of marketing you do at present. How much control would I have on the budget. Who do I report too. What are my objectives and targets etc.

 

[fisicx]

@Reputer459 - you are looking at this from the wrong direction. Instead of looking at a marketing budget you should be looking at how much new business this person generates. It may be they identify a gap in the market and can earn you £500,000 on a minimal spend. Or they may realise your target market is saturated and no matter how much you spend you aren't going to see any real improvement (ie: income = spend).

You mention SEO, Paid social advertising, Google ads, CRO. These are different skill sets. An SEO expert may not know much about PPC. A marketing expert may know how to identify a source of leads but not the technical methods to achieve this (such as setting up a negative keyword google ads campaign).

What is it you want to achieve? Are you looking to expand the business, consolidate your position in the market or maybe just get more bang for your buck?

 

[MBE2017]

As fisicx mentions above, you need to decide what you want to achieve.

I worked at a company who decided to use radio advertising, and their marketing gurus sold them on the idea of 2-3 years advertising to get their name known, and then to move towards a sales message.

I pointed out after 50 years established in the area they were already known, but after a year, and a £100k wasted IMO, they decided to go for a sales message, which brought in loads of new business and paid for itself many times over.

I was manager at a company and the owner told myself to hire a rep, I requested we hire a salesman instead. He even as owner did not see the difference, his bottom line did.

Best of luck OP.

 

[Mark T Jones]

Mirroring much of the above, its a circular equation - expenditure versus results

The big questions include:

What is a normal/acceptable lead time on seeing results?
How are you measuring/monitoring results?

Inevitably, if you give someone a budget, the first thing most will do is spend that budget, then wonder what to do next.

When interviewing, I'd listen closely to the operational questions they ask you - that will be a good insight to their knowledge and integrity.

 

[Deleted member 335660]

@Reputer459 - you are looking at this from the wrong direction. Instead of looking at a marketing budget you should be looking at how much new business this person generates. It may be they identify a gap in the market and can earn you £500,000 on a minimal spend. Or they may realise your target market is saturated and no matter how much you spend you aren't going to see any real improvement (ie: income = spend).

You mention SEO, Paid social advertising, Google ads, CRO. These are different skill sets. An SEO expert may not know much about PPC. A marketing expert may know how to identify a source of leads but not the technical methods to achieve this (such as setting up a negative keyword google ads campaign).

What is it you want to achieve? Are you looking to expand the business, consolidate your position in the market or maybe just get more bang for your buck?

Your right, but then would the job not be "Business Development Manager"

 

[Paul Carmen]

@Reputer459 What is your marketing plan, based on what you're trying to achieve with your budget? If you don't have one then you can't really hire someone...

The problem is, that no matter what set of skills the person you hire has, without defining the plan first they are very unlikely to have all the skills you need.

Effectively you need to approach this the other way around, we don't currently know that much about your business, only what you've put in the post, but it should look at:

1. Do you track all your leads/sales now and know what works for you already; e.g. any current marketing, on site sales, web sales, phone sales etc
2. Who are your customers; e.g. B2B large companies, or B2B SME, both, or is it a combination of trade and joe public
3. How do your current customers know about you, and more importantly, where do potential new customers look to find our about your products/services
4. What's your market like; e.g. where are you trading, locally, regionally, nationally, who are the competitors etc
5. What's your USP; e.g. why would they buy from you and what's different/better about your proposition
6. How do those customers buy from you; e.g. is it face to face at a builders yard, online, on the phone etc, or a combination of all of these
7. What do you want to grow and why; e.g. what's most profitable, what's easiest to scale, will you need to upgrade your website, do you need more people to answer the phones etc

These are the sort of questions you need to answer, and areas to research, to come up with a sensible plan for your marketing. This may mean you need to divert some budget to sales people, website development etc.

Only then do you know what channels you'll be advertising on; e.g. is it PPC, SEO, radio, local TV, trade magazines, or something else?

What many companies find is that one person can't do that type of job, as the skills required to do research, web work, PPC, SEO are too broad. You often need 3rd parties to help, or an agency to run the marketing processes for you, as you don't have the scale/budget to do it all in house.

You may well find you'll be better off with someone being responsible for sales development and managing the customer growth side, with an agency or a few 3rd parties dealing with the detail skilled marketing work.

 

[SEO_Freelancer]

I feel a bit uneasy about reading a marketing budget of £150k without underpinning commercial expectations.

I'm also presuming a £150k budget is derived from existing turnover and therefore ROI should be established to date?

Feels very loose and I'd have a lot of apprehension with this level of spend with a new hire.